


Kill Your Demons

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, New Year's Eve, Non-Linear Narrative, Rebirth, Revenge, Sin City Aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: A mosaic is a fractured life; it reveals in pieces the blood, sweat, and bullets behind the masks a person wears. Cassian Andor wears many masks. Jyn Erso wears more.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [13letters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/gifts).



> Dedicating this piece to the lovely 13letters; their work, "Her Red, Red Lipstick (The Imprint It Leaves On His Cheek)" is phenomenal, and its writing style inspired the non-linear nature of this work. I hope 2017 treats you well, 13letters, and that your writing comes as easily as it can (I meant to write you something really sweet, but then...this happened).
> 
> This piece is as much a thought experiment as a gift, too - there's an overuse of parenthesis ([{ - }]) and a fair amount of list-making. An alternative summary is this: after her father is murdered by Orson Krennic, and her childhood home is burned to the ground, Jyn Erso does her best to keep her head down - that is, until she meets hitman, Cassian Andor, and enlists his help in taking her revenge.
> 
> Thank you, reader, for indulging me; thank you, 13letters, for your kindness and inspiration. Have a lovely New Year, all of you. XOXO

An assorted list of items that can be found in Jyn Erso’s apartment as of December 31st, 6pm:

  * A pair of long, thick socks with holes in the heels, worn every day (she bought a pair of boots when the year was new that chafed her calves when she walked; these socks were the only ones long enough to keep her skin from turning red and peeling. They’re tucked away in the corner of her living room, next to the boots in question; they remain there until it’s time for her to do laundry, and then return there after a toss in the dryer.)  

  * A book of matches, never used, advertising the Bacon Burger at Dax’s Diner (and there’s not actually bacon on that burger; she knows, she’s tried it, and she ate vege-meat long enough to know when someone’s keeping her fatty grease from her. The matches were a gift from a fired employee who’d left a few months before July’s heat came around; he’d tucked them into Jyn’s own ketchup-stained apron with a smile that gleamed in a way Jyn knew well; he’d whispered a secret into Jyn’s listening ear, then disappeared out the front doors forever.  
  
She forgets his name as fast as she can, but the scent of him – smoke, curling up and over the wrists – lingers in the Diner as a threat, a warning, a promise. He’d had wrinkles around his mouth, Jyn thinks, fingering the booklet; crow’s feet flanking his eyes and frown lines beside his lips.  
  
[“Remember to look up.”])  

  * Dead roses, tucked into the trash can (they’re too close to the top for her not to see them every time she goes to toss a microwave meal away. Worse than the sight of molding petals, however, is the smell; all the air freshener in the world can’t clear the scent of death out of her kitchen. Jyn finds herself staring at the garbage in the middle of the night, chewing on her bottom lip and wondering when it will be full enough to take out to the curb.)  

  * Party poppers  

  * An unopened bottle of champagne (tucked into the side of her refrigerator and shining an ugly green whenever she opens the door. She doesn’t even like champagne; the bubbles are deceptive and do nothing to hide the dryness that overtakes her tongue, but she’s been told it’s tradition, so the bottle made its way into her cart the last time she went grocery shopping.  
  
[Tradition is a word that tastes dry, too, all buffered with bubbles that have no meaning. Jyn pokes at them, watches them like flashing lights on a Christmas tree she’s never owned, and wonders at their appeal.  
  
{If she has a tradition at all, it’s to keep moving. A New Year rings in; a new lease is signed; a new apartment is lived in, pressed upon, until the walls press back against her. It’s been seven months – no, it’s been eight months – no. She’s spent too long in this place, losing track of time in the white walls and the smell of smoke and the flowers dying in her trashcan.}})  

  * A tube of red lipstick (waxy enough that her lips feel heavier whenever she puts it on.)  

  * A broken necklace chain (this is tucked away in the bathroom cabinet, hidden behind her deodorant. Not only are the two lobster links shattered, but the pendant at the end – a crystal, probably fake, but perfectly clear – is fractured, its end jagged and more likely to draw blood than it is attention.  
  
[Jyn remembers her own bleeding hands, her own shouted curses, and the necklace falling to the ground – the dirt had been cold in the cemetery this year day, the shrubs shriveled, the ribbon wreaths faded, and she hadn’t been able to stay on her knees for long.])  

  * Two copies of _Great Expectations_ (one is dog eared, annotated, and frightfully old; the other’s spine has yet to be broken.)



*

An assorted list of items that can be found in Cassian Andor’s apartment as of December 31st, 6pm:

  * A paper shredder, tucked into the corner of his office (though it’s not really an office, it’s just the bedroom, though the lack of the bed keeps this fact from being well known [he prefers to sleep on the couch, anyway; he’s moved too often to find worth in buying a real bed, but couches – couches are versatile]. The plastic lining of the shredder is tearing some, overfull with sheets and names and numbers that he needs to erase from his history.)  

  * A pizza box, sitting on top of the trash can and full to the brim with tootsie roll wrappers (he doesn’t have a problem. The pizza place he likes just gives out the candies with every pizza he orders. They’d given him a bag of his own when he’d ordered from them on Christmas Eve [spinach, onion, and bacon. No breadsticks.])  

  * The broken-off heel of a woman’s dress shoe (the day had been wet, cold, and he’d caught her when she’d slipped off the edge of the sidewalk without thinking about what he was doing. Her swears had fallen faster than the rain, and she’d flinched away from his touch; only a few moments of awkward fumbling made the wolverine behind her eyes consider him with something less than fear.  
  
[He’d offer to drive her home, wincing while she wobbled on one good shoe. She’d considered him for the longest time {red, waxy lipstick touching her teeth when she bit her lip.}  
  
{She’d left her heel in his car by accident, he thinks, though he hardly knows how she stumbled into her apartment complex without it. He’d watched her white-grey coat disappear into the rain, then turned out of the parking lot without looking back.}])  

  * Several thin, black ties.  

  * A steel box, hidden beneath the shirts that the ties go with (he takes the box out when the nights get longer and the world feels a little too cold and counts the bullet casings he keeps inside. As of December 31st, there were thirty three [there is a math to this {a murderer’s math}, but his head isn’t designed for formulas with variables that are supposed to hold still.])  

  * _Nightfall,_ by Isaac Asimov, in its original novella form (he feels the need to clarify this every time, as though the purity of the original has to be maintained. It’s ink is beginning to wear off the pages [it had been old when he’d bought it in the first place {he wraps it in tissue paper whenever he has to move, carrying it with him in his duffle bag, nestled on top of unremarkable clothes.}])



***

She sees him sitting at the hotel bar, a bag by his feet and a glass in his hand. He doesn’t make eye contact, but he shifts in the way a man does when he knows he’s being watched. She leans back against the wall of the lounge and takes a sip of her own drink (water; it’s too early for booze – eight in the evening on New Year’s Eve.)

She finishes off her glass before pushing off of the wall and walking not towards him, but rather just past him. She bumps into a woman wearing a dress made out of silver and smiles through her apology, turning her head in time to catch him watching her back.

His gaze follows her as she walks towards the bar, lingers beside her while she refills her glass without looking as though he’s with her. When she turns around, it’s to find him smiling into his glass.

“Something funny?” she asks, one eyebrow quirking upward.

“I’ve been told that anything can be funny, if you look at it from the right perspective,” he replies. His dark eyes flicker away from her as he takes another sip from his glass.

Jyn Erso follows the line of his neck with her eyes and watches him swallow, then smile at his empty glass with a touch of sadness.

“Let me guess,” he says, more to the glass than her. “You threw out the flowers?”

“They were molding,” Jyn says. The tilt of her mouth isn’t quite apologetic (she wonders, idly, if he can still smell them on her). “Let me guess,” she adds, “you still have my heel.”

“Midnight came a little early,” Cassian Andor says with a shrug. “I still don’t see why you won’t let me call you Cinderella.”

“There are a thousand better nicknames you could use,” Jyn says, her voice dry. “I don’t want you to use any of them, but that one’s just uncreative.”

He laughs, at this, and lets it sound genuine. Jyn takes a sip of her water and winces when the ice cubes bump against her teeth. She waits, watching him shift. When his wrist twitches, and his hips shift, she takes her cue and falls into the spot beside him.

“What’re you drinking?” she murmurs, a touch too loud for a hotel bar.

“Nothing exciting,” he tells her, shaking the remaining ice cube in his glass. “Whiskey.”

“I don’t know how you stand it.” She’s not looking at him, now, but the burn of him radiates through his white dress shirt (it’s one of his nicer ones; the lines of him are accentuated, she thinks, by the addition of his thin, black tie.)

Across the bar, a man in white shifts. Jyn doesn’t look at him, but his gaze refreezes the water in her glass. She sips at it, anyway, and bumps Cassian’s arm in a way that appears playful.

(In her heart, she means for it to be playful.)

“What about you?” he asks her.

“I left the champagne at home,” she tells him. “I don’t drink and drive.”

“Ah, neither do I,” Cassian says, shaking his head. “That’s why I walked.” He waves down a passing hotel staff member and presses his glass into their open hands. Jyn looks away, down at the sea of shoes the hotel bar swims on.

There is a brush against her hand, so soft that she almost misses it. She grimaces when she looks up again, but she does not look at Cassian.

***

An assorted list of items that can be found on Jyn Erso’s person as of December 31st, 8pm:

  * A pair of black, high heeled shoes (heels unbroken) with straps that leave red marks across the tops of her feet.  

  * Red, waxy lipstick, both on her lips and in its tube.  

  * Eleven bobby pins.  

  * A small, black purse, matched to an equally small, black dress (she’d never owned one before all of this; the buying process had been…tedious [Cassian had been impressed up until the point she’d made him pay for it.])  

  * A handgun.



*

An assorted list of items that can (probably) be found on Cassian Andor’s person as of December 31st, 8pm:

  * Handcuffs.  
  

  * One of his nicer ties (made nicer by the fact that it’s not stained [Jyn argues that there’s not enough fabric in his ties, generally, for them to end up stained {the specks of blood on the two he’s had to burn this past year beg to differ.}])  

  * Black shoes that are a bit too large (he wears two pairs of socks to compensate, but it doesn’t help).  

  * A handgun, tucked into his waistband and pressed against the small of his back.  

  * A faux-gold wrist watch.  

  * A red rose, tucked into his lapel.



***

He presses her against one of the hotel room walls and is riveted, for a moment, by the way her skin clashes with the wallpaper. Her ornate hair is falling out of its twist – if he looks closely enough, he can see the bobby pins she’s no doubt going to lose.

She has a hand wrapped around his tie and is tugging, demanding his attention while she scowls up at him. It toes the line of painful, and he nearly shudders, but Cassian is a man who is long practiced in the art of self-control.

All the same –

Her lipstick smears over his mouth. It tastes like the worst thing in the world, but he doesn’t stop kissing her for it.

He fits a leg thigh between her legs and feels her latch onto his hair; the shirt he’s tucked in is pulled free of his belt; his belt hits the floor.

(His hands are covered in blood, a result of peeling cuticles, but she looks so good in red that he doesn’t care.)

***

An assorted list of items that can _not_ be found on Cassian Andor’s person as of December 31st, 8pm:

  * A handgun.



***

There’s a flower crown of roses woven into her hair as she runs through the house, wielding a homemade scepter to better command her subjects. Said subjects bow as she flies past, though one reaches out just in time to keep her from running headlong into the couch. She is lifted into the air, squealing, and twirled around. Her father – his crown made of greying hair and his kingdom of wrinkles – grins up at her with a twinkle in his eye worth more than all of Jyn’s crown jewels.

(She’s still awake, later that night, and still wearing her crown, when he’s called away to work. She’s still awake, but barely, when she hears something in the house break, like a vase smashing against a wall. She’s still awake when she hears her mother start to scream.

[She doesn’t know where she is when she first smells smoke, but there’s a burning against her spine and a thought flashing through her mind as her mother's screams go quiet {“This is how kingdoms fall.”}])

***

A brief description of what Jyn Erso sees in front of her as of December 31st, 8:13pm:

  * A man dressed in white, wearing the same insignia that was once worn by her father ( _my kingdom_ , she remembers her father saying, _you shall inherit my kingdom, stardust, like a good princess should_.)  

  * The nervous twitch of a hand, the cool steel of a gaze as it moves past her, flowing through the crowd that’s gathered in the hotel’s bar.  

  * Cassian’s dark hair, waving in the corner of her eye like a flag (is the air conditioning on? She feels cold, too cold, and his gun is digging into her thigh like something that doesn’t belong.)  

  * A form, silver-blue, shimmering just out of sight (it’s not the woman from before; she’s left the bar, gone off, Jyn thinks, to her room to better celebrate alone [the light hovers, shifts, and sends the blue scurrying, but it always returns, pressed up against her vision like a haze she can’t blink away.])



*

A brief description of what the kickback of a handgun feels like:

  * Like blood pooling in the back of her mouth.  

  * Like the baseball a father throws his child in the backyard of a white-picket-fence home; like ice tea served on a wraparound porch as the sun sets in summer (like the life young Jyn Erso never got to have.)  

  * Like Cassian swearing against her mouth, swearing at her side; like a curse being broken by true love’s kiss; like Sleeping Beauty waking up; like Cinderella at midnight.  

  * Like police sirens, like the cold night air, like an alibi as she walks out the front doors, Cassian Andor at her side (he’s shouting into his phone, but a it's a whisper-shout [the police swarm past them as he does, but Jyn doesn’t look at them {she doesn’t think her hand will bruise, but even if it does, it doesn’t matter anymore.}])



***

Midnight comes over a world full of watchful eyes. Jyn follows the second hand of Cassian’s watch, cradled by the cold and by his reassuring arm. Her knees are shaking, and her feet _ache_ , but she holds, teetering beside him as they continue their way down the street.

“You’re stuck with me now, you know that?” he mutters. The whiskers of his beard drag against her ear and makes the shivering of her knees all the more complicated.

“I figured I would be,” she murmurs back. Her breath puffs out in a cloud of ice and fogs up his watch; she looks up in the same moment the year tips over, falling head first into the new.

Cassian leans down and kisses her.

***

A brief description of what Orson Krennic's death feels like:

  * Like a party popper bursting open and leaving glitter on the floor that's left behind until the sun shines, bright and burning in the morning. 



**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
